Drastic cuts to council services in Lincoln after £3m funding shortfall

Adult day care centres will be closed and householders charged to have their green bins collected as councils are forced to slash their budgets.

Seven day centres across Lincolnshire are likely to shut by April, meaning disabled adults will have to travel elsewhere for help and support. The county council claims falling user numbers have made the sites "unviable" as it looks to balance the books.

Meanwhile, a "catastrophic" £3 million drop in income at the City of Lincoln Council means a raft of reductions are planned for its services.

11 comments

I think there are considerable savings to be made in the cost of Government itself and quite frankly I'd chop Lincoln City Council straight out of the picture, along with any other district councils in the county, and centralise it all under the single unitary authority. That would save on staff, councillors, elections, etc and enable economies of scale in services through letting larger value contracts for services etc. While we're at it we should also end the Humberside region farce and revert it to plain old Lincolnshire and Yorkshire - saving a whole government department and a police authority or two etc..... The problem with Government in this country is there is just too much of it.
DarkPool talks of quality amongst councillors - having less would reduce the space for wasters.

Obviously I'm not saying you have to give up your job - after all, most of the councillors are on about £5k p.a. But you DO have to give up a significant amount of your own free time and also time that you would normally spend doing your day job.
I'm sure there will be plenty of red arrows for this statement, but I suggest the councillors are actually pretty good value for money

The opportunities for cost savings in IT software and hardware brought on by the advent of cloud computing services is considerable. This ranges from the use of Software as a Service to entire Infrastructure as a Services facilities. In the face of sever cuts I am surprised that the local and county councils are not announcing with a flourish that they are investigating these solutions to save money.
The world is changing and we need to look at how we see our communities. The collection of bin loads of garden waste frankly should not fall on the council. Those residents with transport can take their own garden waste to appropriate destinations and help out their neighbours without transport by taking their waste as well. Its just out and out laziness that we rely entirely on the council to continue to perform this task.
The councillors who approve the cutting of the CCTV service should be fined or jailed for failing to provide a safe environment for us to live in as we see street crime soar when the service is withdrawn. This move is political suicide and I will vote for the party which pledges not to withdraw the service.
The electorate also need to look very closely at the calibre of the candidates in the next local elections. When times get tough it is arguable that cosy husband and wife teams sitting on the City Council may not be the right people in the right job at the right time and it is for the local political parties to promote candidates who have the skills to pull us through these difficult times and not individuals who have long service.
Finally national and local political leaders need to come clean about the realities of our economy. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx in the Wealth of Nations and Das Kapital respectively clearly indicate that economic growth is finite and we of this and the next few generations need to get to grips with shrinking economies. Any politician who says otherwise is simply misleading a desperate electorate who are searching for a quick fix to problems with few options for a cure.
This then takes us back to technology. We are approaching an era of massive growth in entertainment, hospitality technology and mobile communications which will radically shakeup the way our economies work and they way we live. The opportunities are there and I for one look forward to announcements from the local authorities on how they are going to take advantage of these chances.

To all the people giving me the thumbs down,just one question,would you all be happy to have a council tax increase to pay for the proposed service cuts that hardly anyone uses ? No,I didn't think so,its one or the other,Get real people.

Whine - are you kidding me? Do you expect them to do it for free? Being a councillor is quite a commitment (I imagine) so there needs to be at least some incentive to give up a significant chunk of income that one could be earning elsewhere.
A narrow minded comment, in my opinion

Well I for one am relieved to see that the councillors' humble allowances have been protected, especially The Great Leader's paltry £13K. I would hate to think of them struggling in these times of austerity, after all they do so much for us and our city.
http://tinyurl.com/ak8lupp
* The above comment may contain traces of sarcasm

It will be interesting to see how projects like the Lincoln 10k roadrace and dance factor continue with the loss of the sport development team. This is without mentioning the thousands of young peoples lives they have helped change through schools coaching and other projects such as fairplay football. What a fantastic way to celebrate Lincoln's Olympic legacy. Well done to all those councilors who made that "hard" decision.....well done!